In the beginning

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow.  For the initiated folks, that’s short for National Novel Writing Month.  The goal of the event/group/movement is to write a novel of at lest 50,000 words in the month of November.  You aren’t allowed to pre-write anything, although you’re free to outline, work out characters, etc.

I completed NaNoWriMo in 2009 and failed miserably in 2010.  I’m making a concerted effort to finish and finish well this year.  I’m using a schedule that should let me finish without thrashing out the last few thousand words at the 11th hour.

If I remember correctly, the hardest part is the middle ten days.  At the beginning you’re excited, at the end you’re looking forward to finishing.  The middle drags.  You’re wondering what the heck you’re doing, and why you’re doing it for free.  Your initial ideas are already burned off, and you’re stuck in the middle act.  That middle act is about 10 days away from now, so I’m still plenty excited.

If you’re wondering why I’m doing this, here’s my best answer: I want to!  My 2009 product is far from perfect, but two years later I finally figured out what to do with it and I’m looking forward to editing it this winter.  Plus, it feels great to honestly say that I wrote a real-life novel.

If you’ve ever wanted to actually write a novel, maybe now’s the time to do it!  Here are my veteran’s tips on how to make it through the month:

• Write at least fifteen minutes every day.
• Expect it to be hard.  YOU ARE WRITING A NOVEL.
• Have fun.  YOU ARE WRITING A NOVEL!

And now, for a reminder that even when things are hard, life can be pretty great:

Ernest Hemingway Knew What Was Up

In high school, I read The Sun Also Rises.  That book absolutely blew my mind.  Ever since then, I’ve been a Hemingway guy.  I even visited his house in Key West a few years ago.

I’ve been trying to pump myself up for NaNoWriMo this year, and I’ve been trolling through some Hemingway quotes for some clues as to what the hell I’m supposed to do with an empty piece of paper.  Here are some of my favorites:

• Write drunk; edit sober.
• There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
• The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.
• There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
• A man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
• Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

My other favorite writer was F. Scott Fitzgerald, mostly for This Side of Paradise.  Here are a few Fitzgerald quotes I like:

• A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
• First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.
• His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.
• I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.
• Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
• To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

I like those guys.

 

The Texas State Fair

Last weekend, we visited some good friends up in the Metroplex.  The main event of the weekend: The Texas State Fair.  While I consider myself to be a diehard Texan, I have to admit that I had previously never been to the fair.  Probably because of this guy:

From Wikipedia.

Wow.  Big Tex.  This guy is creepy.  He is either the non-organic reincarnation of some sleazy old cattleman, or he is a Trojan horse delivered to Texas by Oklahoma.  Either way, I never stood directly in front of him.

I overcame my fear of Big Tex because of one thing: fried food.  For years, I’ve been hearing stories of a glorious treasure trove of weird and amazing fried foods.  Fried pizza? Fried Oreos? Fried beer? I want to go to that.

Last Saturday, my dreams came true.  I got try all of the following fried foods:

Fletcher’s Jalapeno and Cheese Corny Dog (A+):  I didn’t cry when I ate this, but my vision did blur for a little bit.  This freshly made, gooey, spicy hunk of mystery meat was so delicious that I wanted to flip over the picnic table at which I was sitting.  I would’ve, had my bride not been sitting on it.  I cannot recommend this item highly enough.  Unless you have high cholesterol or you are trying to look like shirtless Ryan Gosling.  Because this won’t help.

Fried Oreos (B):  Was it tasty? I guess so.  It was kind of like when you eat brownies that haven’t quite set yet, except that it wasn’t real chocolate, it was Tootsie Roll chocolate.  They kind of made me feel bad about myself.

Fried Ice cream (B+): I don’t even understand how this works, but I ate some of it. Tasty, but kind of like ice cream with a churro base.  I don’t love churros.  I am, however, intrigued by Charro.

Fried Ice cream + Fried Oreos (A): I don’t understand how they combine so well, but it works.

Fried Frito Pie (A+): It’s like a gooey, extra crunchy tater tot.  I wasn’t sure how this would work, because how do you fry something that is already a giant mess?  The answer is to turn the gooey mess into neat, little hush-puppy sized fried balls. These were like a Latin hush puppy.  By themselves, a solid A-.  With sour cream and salsa? A+.  Since the fair, I have had daydreams of shoving fistfulls of these into my mouth.  Then my stomach hurts, even though it was only a daydream.  Or was it?

Fried Beer (F): I shook my head in disgust when I ate this monstrosity, this abomination.  Beer? Great.  Ravioli? Delightful.  Fried food, see the rest of the post. So how do you combine these things to make a horrible, horrible “food”.  The answer is that you don’t.  Let me back up.  I had no idea what to expect when I ordered fried beer.  I was thinking funnel cake coated with beer instead of powdered sugar.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Here’s what happens.  They take a pasta-looking thing similar to ravioli, inject it with skunky beer, fry it, and then pump old nacho cheese sauce on it.  That is wrong.  You bite into and then get a squirt of hot, nasty beer.  It basically taste like vomit (hot, acidic, etc).  I applaud the “audacity of hope” that combining these great loves could create something great.  I weep for the result.

In sum, the Texas State Fair was pretty great.  I saw a robot, some people running around with swords, weird food, and lots and lots of carnies.  I don’t know what else you could look for in a weekend.

Livin the Dream

You know how sometimes in fall or winter, when you close your car door you get shocked? That happens to me pretty much all the time. It doesn’t matter what season it is. Most of the time I won’t even touch doors with my hands. I’ll use an elbow, a jacket pocket, etc.

Recently, my truck has been having electrical problems. Hmm.

Put these two together, and what can you surmise?

I’m an X-Man in waiting, and I need help to harness my power over electricity.

I think my code name would be Buzz or Zaps or something like that. I’ve got time to figure it out.

A Lesson in Stress Management

Texas is struggling through a drought.  It wasn’t surprising, then, when the unfamiliar sounds of a thunderstorm woke me up on Sunday morning.  I looked at the clock and smiled when I saw that it was only 5:45am.  I still had a good hour of sleep left.

What did surprise me was the shrieking I heard fifteen minutes later.  I heard Sam screaming from somewhere else in the house and I was immediately out of bed.  Within half a second, I was aware that our burglar alarm was also howling.  I grabbed the golf club I keep by the bed for situations just like this one.  The dread I felt in my stomach was outmatched by all of the adrenaline surging through me.

George and I ran towards the screaming and found Sam in the hall, screaming, “What’s happening?”  My dog and I ran through the house, looking for any signs of a smashed window or an open door.  Nothing.  I kicked open the closed door in our guest bedroom and raised the golf club, ready to mess somebody up.  Nothing.

Confident that no one had broken into the house, I breathed a deep sigh of relief.  Or, at least as much of a sigh of relief as someone can breathe when a burglar alarm is howling at 6:03am.

Sam and I regrouped in the front hallway and stared at the burglar alarm.  “What do we do?” we shrugged at each other.  The alarm system came with the house and it wasn’t connected to any monitoring system.  We typed in typical codes (1111, 1234, etc.) I called the alarm company number listed on our unit (and got stuck in a phone tree). Sam googled the company and found out that they weren’t even in business anymore.

Do you know how loud a burglar alarm is?

I went into the garage and tried to see if the alarm was attached to any particular breaker.  It wasn’t.  I called my dad.  He said the same thing happened to them once, and they had to go into the attic to cut the cord to the alarm.

I climbed into the attic, flashlight and golf club in hand.  Of course, the light bulb didn’t work.  I made a quick sweep of the area surrounding my person with my club, just to scare off any furry woodland creatures who may have made a home up there.  The place where the alarm was was covered by insulation.  Of course it was.

I went back down and realized how badly I needed to use the restroom.  It was, after all, 6:15am.  That damn alarm was so loud that George just stayed in the garage, away from the speaker.

I stalked back into the front hallway and asked Sam, “Should I just cut the wire?”  She said yes.

In a moment of Latin fury, I ripped the alarm unit off of the wall, threw it on the ground, and cut the cord.  I then immediately swore, because that move made no sense.  None.

I climbed back into the attic,  ready to meet my fate with either electrocution or death by a rabid rock squirrel who had taken a wrong turn sometime in the mid 2000s.

The alarm, in an act of God so beautiful and merciful that I can’t even describe it in human language, stopped alarming.  I went back downstairs to find Samantha on a ladder, with the speaker in her hand.

“Igot it!” she smiled, very proud of herself.

Let me pause and re-run through the events of 6am to 6:28am from Sam’s point of view.

Sam woke up in the guest bedroom to the sound of the alarm.  She had fallen asleep in there because she couldn’t go to sleep the night before and had been reading.  When she woke up, her Fort Worth roots kicked in.  She assumed that somehow our non-monitored system was hooked up to the National Weather Service, and that a tornado was about to rip the roof off of our house and kill us all.

She ran into the hall screaming (and maybe 1/3 awake), to see George and I skidding into the hallway, bumping into each other and looking to defend her to the death.  While I was scurrying around in the attic, she was furiously googling, like some kind of Southern belle computer wizard.  At one point, she heard me ask if I should cut the alarm cord.  Which is what I meant.  But then she turned around to try a new code, only to see the unit broken into four pieces by her hulked out Latin husband.

I assume at this point, her hatred of being woken up early ignited some kind of super strength, so she carried our aluminum ladder through the house, ripped off the alarm, and dismantled it with a giant screwdriver.  I can’t be sure because I was in the attic, covered in insulation and swatting at phantom rodents.

The moral of the story is that during the weekend, you should never wake up Sam early.  She will end you.

[PS We got a new system in the house now so don't try to break in unless you want the federalis and an angry country girl on you.]

Sam and Joey Go to an RV Show

Last Friday afternoon, on the way home from work, I saw it.  An RV show – a mere mile from our domicile.  “Sam,” I said, in hushed tones.  “Do you want to go to the RV show?”

I don’t know why, but for days I couldn’t think of anything else.  On at least four separate occasions on Saturday, I asked Sam about the RV show.  “Can we go? It’s free.”

I’m not even sure what the appeal was.  I struggle with comfortably driving our Camry, let alone an RV.  We don’t camp, we don’t go on trips.  We don’t have an extra $89,000.  But I had to see.

Finally on Sunday, we made our pilgrimage to the RV show.  It did not disappoint.

There was free swag.  We got an OFFICIAL RV water bottle (ice cold water included).  We also had the chance to get a free yard stick.  I’m not sure what the yard stick was for, so I didn’t take one.  What were we supposed to measure?

Other than the free stuff and a food stand (hot dogs, nachos, ICEEs), it was basically just rows and rows of RVs.  In each RV, the toilets were taped over with a sign that said, “Please use the portable toilets.”

Some of the RVs were the size of our first apartment.  Some of them were small and cute.  There is such a thing as a cute RV.  Behold:

Sam's favorite

Maybe that is technically a trailer since it’s not a vehicle.  It’s an RT.  It was like $15K, though.  Good looking, easy to haul, but expensive.

For my money, the best choice was the Livin Lite Quicksilver:

I think this one was only like 700 lbs, so even The Edge could tow it.  Plus, it was only like $6K.  Kind of Spartan for a married guy, though.  So, our overall winner was:

The Aliner Sport.

You can’t tell from that picture, but the pop-up part (the triangle) comes down in about 30 seconds, so you have a base about the same size as the Livin Lite above.  No obstructed views, plenty of room, more amenities, middle price point.  Winner.  I would actually buy one of these.  One day.  Far, far from now.

One fun fact about me is that I am very economical unless it is a giant purchase, in which case I will gladly fork over our hard-earned life savings.  So, we had to walk away. To the giant RVs.

Sam enjoys the outdoor kitchen.

That was pretty much it.  The moral of the story is that RV Shows are everything that I had hoped for and so much more.  Someone please go in on an Aliner with me.

Occupy Wall Street

If you are reading this, then you have Internet access, which means you have no doubt seen the Occupy Wall Street protestors and their offshoots. They’re talking about being “the 99%”.

I want to share a couple of thoughts. First, I think 99% of us are too busy working or looking for work to protest (insert cause) or pay much attention to people dressed as zombies parading around New York.

Second, I understand that protestors are upset about having student debt. Me too. That is why I have a job. To pay off my debt. To support my family. To support causes that mean something to me.

Third, the economy is bad. Yes. Government could and should be better. Yes. It is your responsibility to take care of you and yours. Yes.

One of the things that I love about existentialism is that in the face of absurdity, it shrugs and says, “Now what?”

Regardless of circumstances, you are responsible for you. No one owes you anything. You aren’t entitled to anything.

I don’t necessarily disagree with everything the protectors are saying. For instance, locally, protectors are trying to move local elections to November to encourage turnout. That is a good idea.

I want to caution everyone to consider their first principles and axioms that they hold to be true.

Mine, implicit here, are that personal responsibilty and obligation are real and important.

I’m uncomfortable with what seem to be first principles of the protestors: that they are owed something, that a comfortable life is a right, an that people with a certain income are guilty of something.

Debate. Go.